released a new version of Huntercoin: Mithril Edition (HUC:ME) : V 1.0.7 (22026)

I've just released my client update, that has a lot of changes and added feature and i've opened access to everyone to try it out.

I've done a lot regarding this, and here a summary about the new client additions. Let's recap: (lot of bugfixing and adjustments, too many to keep track of them all)

Path structure

In order to simplify data backup, I've changed a bit the data structure (so sorry if you miss settings.xml configuration, they are still valid, the file is just in another position) the structure is this:

Root = Client Installation Path, default is C:\MithrilMan\Huntercoin Mithril Edition

Root
   |----Content
   |----Data
            |----Behaviours
                      |----HuntercoinME.SimbleBehaviours
            |----Players
            |----ScreenShot
   |----Logs
            |----ChatRooms

When you want to backup your data, you have just to backup the Data  folder I encourage doing that when you change wallet, even if wallet isn't store here

now let me explain: Content contains game media, do not touch anything there, and don't care about that, no need to backup

Data as i said, this is the most important folder and that's the one you should backup, now that i've moved logs outside of that, it takes little space in this folder there is the settings.xml, the file used to configure most of the client aspects (do not edit manually and to reset to default settings, just delete this file before launching the client)

Data\Behaviours this folder contains your behaviours configurations (file behaviours.config) and your behaviours associations with your hunters (behavioursAssociations.config) If you want to share your configuration with other users, just send the behaviours.config file In this folder, you'll drop behaviours that will be released, at the moment there are my two simple behaviours: SimpleCollector and SimpleHeartseeker, both contained into the dll in HuntercoinME.SimbleBehaviours folder

Data\Players Here you'll find 2 files: gamePlayers.json and reservedPlayers.json gamePlayers.json holds the various user's settings you have chosen (like the color you assigned to a "chat user") reservedPlayers.json store the players you reserved using the "Reserve Player" feature (details below). This is a very important file because if you lose this, you will not be able to activate that player (so you'll lost the 10 hucs you paid for his reservation). Note that when you reserve a player, it's bound to an address of your wallet, so if you change the wallet, you can't activate that player

Data\ScreenShot Here you'll find all the screenshot you have generated in game (pressing F12)

Logs

here you'll find several logs (in the  settings window you can disable some log, unckecking "Enable Debug Log")

• debug.log is the current generic client debug log. Every day it generate a new log, and the old is archived (max 3 archived logs)
• debugBot.log is the behaviours log that contains useful information to debug behaviours or look what they've done. Every day it generate a new log, and the old is archived (max 3 archived logs)
• debugChat.log is the chat log, not important

Logs\ChatRooms here you'll find logs about conversation done in the chat while you were logged in. Every chat room generate a file in the form of ChatRoomName_YYYY-mm-dd (Y=years, m=month, d=day) Since the GUI just show last 50 messages, if you left the client open and want to see the channels activity, you can just open that files to take a look into (it's readable)

Interface changes

• Get rid of the left sidebar that were taking too much Map space. replaced with a narrow vertical toolbar that holds shortcut for GUI interaction (see below)
• Implemented adjustable opacity/translucence of the main GUI windows (My Troop, Cell Info, Targets)
• Implemented adjustable font size (with a smaller default font size)
• Lot of changes to the realtime chat (more details in the chat section)
• moved some icons (chat icon placed on the left toolbar instead of the top right one, to have more readibility and GUI consistence
• In the Alarms Window, now changing sound volume will impact currently played sounds too

Realtime Chat

a lot of work has been done here

• Added chat logs
• Implemented adjustable color rapresentation for the user, so you can see better who wrote a chat message and if that user is sharing his players positions, you'll see them rapresented by an arrow of that color
• Added an icon next to the user status, that shows if he's sharing his players (you'll see an eye icon)
• Added some contextual info when hovering over an user in your current room. A tooltip will show the user's current local time, so would be easier to find a common time to meet and will leverage difficulty when planning meets. If that player is sharing his players positions it will be stated there too (more on sharing players feature below)
• added a contextual syntax to show clickable address, to paste it into the clipboard or open the "Send HUC" dialog
• Lot of enhancement and fixed lot of problems (some little known bugs still exits but will be fixed soon)

New features

• Implemented the Helping Tour feature, to explain client mechanics (it will be shown automatically after the synchronization ends, and you can open it anytime pressing F1)
• Implemented the "Reserve Player" feature
• Implemented the "Broadcast Players" feature
• Implemented a prototype of the future contest system (actually it just show "The HeartSeeker")

I'll create a news on my website for each new feature, to explain them in details and to explain new interface.
I'm sure i've missed much about new and fixed things, so incase i remember something, i'll update this post :)

I've spent so much time, that now i hope to see players using the client!! :)

P.S. many people seems having trouble understanding how to move hunters, now you can read the ingame tour... anyway i recap: once you select an hunter in "My Troops" window, you can hold SHIFT and rightclick on a walkable cell in the map, to set a path to go there (or hold CTRL to create multiple destinations path)
Once you have your desidered path, just click on the green V icon on the bottom right of "My Troop" window (a video would be easier to understand... i whish i had 100 hands, 50 heads and no full time job to do all what i'd need :P)

I'm happy to announce the new release of my client [Huntercoin: Mithril Edition]

two are the main changes: * new chat with multi chat room with optional password protection * new Automatic Behaviours System, to play even when you are away from keyboard and in future defend vs bots

Now let's start talking about the new Chat System i'm working on, the realtime chat system. In the last version i released it, but it was simple, now i've revamped it and I've added a cool feature people asked about: the private chat rooms.

It has not been easy but I think it was worth it, now you don't have excuses to not team up and fight "the evil" on the map!

let me show you some screenshots (here the link to the album: http://imgur.com/a/oXERl

1 - an overview

respect the previous version, now you have a top bar where you can create a new chat room, join an available room or switch between your active chat rooms (using the combo box) on the bottom now you don't see all currently active players, but just the player that are into the selected room

2 - create a public room
clicking on the Create button, a pop up is shown wher you can type your room name and an optional password. once you have clicked ok, you'll join automatically that room, see pic:

3 - create a private room

if you specify a password while creating a room, that room will be password protected and a lock will be shown next to the chat room name

4 - join a room If you click on the Join button, you can chose the chat room to join

the combobox allow you to search the room you want

and if you want to join a password protected room, you need to enter the password, and if it's wrong, this is what you'll get:

5 - switch between rooms

using the combobox on the chat panel, you are able to switch between your active chat rooms with ease

ok, let me talk now about the Automatic Behaviours System in this version:

before start, let me point out that since i've done an installer, i've changed some file path in order to organize better things to backup easily In the client folder, you'll see a Data folder, that's the only one directory important that you should backup. If you are an old user, you should copy your settings.xml file in that Data directory In Data/ScreenShot you'll find screenshots saved with F12 In Data/logs you'll find logs (even about the new bot system)

ok now let's talk about the automatic behaviours:

you'll see a new icon, a blue button with a cog

clicking that icon, will give you access to a dialog wher you can configure your automatics behaviours

on the top you'll see listed your available bots, in the pic you can see Collector and Hearthseeker that aren't available to you (they are an updated version of what you've available i'm working on) clicking on one of the available behaviour, you'll see your saved configurations.

Let's try clicking on SimpleCollector

as you can see, of course it's empty becase we haven't yet configured anything, click on the button to create a new configuration

you can see all the availables parameters configurable, with the online help that can be seen when you hover the question mark icon

Let me explain briefly those: Target Area X and Target Area Y are the coordinate where your hunter will go to start collecting coins Sight Range rapresent how far your hunter will try to look for coins based on its actual current position Max Distance From Target Area is the value that's used to know if the hunter has to go back to target area. If you are far more then this value, your hunter will go back Max Loot is the maximum amount of coins that your hunter can hold, before going to bank it

this behaviour keep looping, so after it go to base it go back to target area.

here an example of the configuration i've tried to collect coin near the red base pool:

now it's time to assing that behaviour to an our hunter, so right click on the name of one of your hunter in the troop window:

click "Configure Behaviour" to have access to another dialog

you can select multiple different behaviours but only one of each kind, so you can't have applied 2 different SimpleCollector to the same hunter, but you could have SimpleCollector and SimpleHeartseeker running togheter, so that if an heart spawn in a configurable range (look @ SimpleHeartseeker configuration) you can get a new hunter!

ok, once you have created your configuration (remember to press Save!!) you can now see another interesting things in your troop window: you'll see a cog icon next to your player that has some automatic behaviours applied

when the cog is BLACK, this mean that at least one hunter of that player has automatic behaviours, this is important to know because if you try to manual move some hunter that belong to a player with behaviours, if a new block comes every queued moves will be sent, so if you want to have manual control of that player, i've added a menu: right click on your player name and click on Disable Automatic Behaviours, this will set the cog icon to GRAY and will disable automatic behaviours for that player, but keeping the associations so you could re-enable it easily without reapplying configurations.

to enable again just do the same thing, right click and see that the label this time will be Enable Automatic Behaviours and will set back your cog icon to black

as a note, i want just to point out that the configurations and associations are stored into Data/Behaviours

anyway just backup Data folder when you need it. wow, wrote a lot but well, it's a big subject and i merely touched it :)

I'll keep upgrading bots and I will release new ones as they are ready. I'd like to release an SDK to allow every C# fellow to implemet it and hopefully sell it on my future Behaviours Market (depend on success of coin and interest in the client, so it's too early now to talk about that)

Of course the client must be left running in order to have those behaviours applied

Hunters hunt

released a new version of Huntercoin: Mithril Edition (HUC:ME) : V 1.0.5 (42509)

this time, my updates regard mainly two missing features: Transfer Player and Change Reward Address

The first is used when you want to give the control of your hunter to another person (in its own wallet), while the other is used to set where you want your banked coin be sent (this is important if you want to be sure that the HUC you gain, are sent to an encrypted wallet (or a paper wallet), safier then a game wallet

Both features can be accessed using the context menu (right click) of a player you own, see this pic:

Transfer Player

Transfer player is used to give your hunter to someone else, or another of your wallet. All you need is an address of the wallet you want your player to go, that's all!

the screen is pretty simple and well explained, here the pic:

Set Reward Address

Often is a good practice to bank your gained coins in a safe place, here comes useful the Reward Address feature, that give you control on the receiving address of your banked coin.

Even this screen is pretty simple and well explained, here the pic:

at the moment, you have to write this address everytime you create an hunter, but I'll add a default address in the settings window so would be handy for you to set it once then forget about it. Anyway remember that my client has a feature that shows every hunter that share the same address, and this is an intellingence information that people could use to guess which players are under your control and try to understand your tactics!

Refresh Players List

Sometimes can happen that you doesn't see a player you were expected to see in your list (maybe because a blockchain reorg or some deamon bugs or because someone transfered you a player), now I've added a button to force the reloading of your players. It shouldn't be used normally, because it calls a daemon (huntercoind.exe) RPC command that until now has been a lot bugged (name_list) and that could cause the daemon stop responding and updating, anyway since with last huntercoin version domob should have fix this command, I've added this button that could fix some weird behaviours, as said.

the button is available next to the button to create a new player (now every button has a tooltip too!), here the pic (the button is the orange one)

this command could take several seconds, depending on your wallet size, even if with last huntercoind update (1.0.11e) it should be faster (my wallet takes ~ 14 seconds to return from that command). Don't use it if not needed (it even halt game_status update until it ends)

Chat Opacity

Last feature i'll talk about is the chat opacity
Since the chat panel cover part of the game map, even if i added the shortcut SHIFT + SPACE to toggle its visibility, people could find useful to leave chat always open, while being able to see under the chat what's happening, this is why i added an opacity slider to set it's transparency value, you can see it on the top of the chat panel, see the pic:

the opacity level is saved into your settings.xml file, so you don't have to set it everytime, just find a value that's ok for you!

About the chat, i fixed a bug about scrolling messages too (when you clicked on another panel, the chat with previous version were scrolling top, causing headache :D)

Now i could have added something else, but frankly at the moment I don't remember :) As an ending note, I just want to say to everyone that I'm having holiday from 12th of August to 26th, so my development will be halted during this time (need some rest with family, my 7 month daughter has to see the sea :D), but I'll be available anyway to people who want to report problems, etc... (I'll have internet access so no problem!)

When I'll be back, I'll be ready to dive into the bot system implementation (I've already started)

the download link is the same, go to the landing download page

Hunters hunt

released a new version of Huntercoin: Mithril Edition (HUC:ME) : V 1.0.4 (2216)

As you know, blockchain chat is something cool as concept, but practically unusable because it's a game transcation and thus you have to wait transaction confirmation in order to be able to say your things. moreover you have to send on behalf of a player you are planning to move, if you don't want to waste a player movement.

At this point, for me, is like it doesn't exists, i used it just to joke with someone i killed or evaded but nothing more...but now.... things are different!

Finally I implemented the first realtime chat into the game!

It's pretty cool as features, need some work on performance (server side) so could be discontinued when i install a new version or change something, anyway it's there and now you can use it to talk freely with other Huntercoin: Mithril Edition users!

let me explain a bit how it works and why it's there

In my opinion realtime chat is something a game should have in order to improve game experience for players and help builds a community, so it was something to have at any costs (time and server :D)

Only for Huntercoin: Mithril Edition users

Chat Server runs over my VPS and it's an hand made chat server tighted with my client, everyone can chat in realtime with a cool ingame chat interface that gives you the chance to interact more with others and play better togheter and gives you clickable content that can help people cooperate (see clickable contents below)

At the moment (but just because this isn't an easy task, need some time to do) you have some limitation: - only 1 global chat channel - no personal messages

I'm already planning to be able to create multiple channels password protected and do personal chats, but need time to do a proper interface and client/server code, but I'm quite fast so you won't have to wait much :)

But now let's see some detail about the chat system and how it can impact gameplay and user experience.
in top right area you have a new button

clicking on this, will toggle the chat panel, that's a slide panel on the right on the map and when expanded it covers partially the map  

Is it possible to toggle the chat, pressing SHIFT + SPACE so would be really easy to open and close the chat with one hand without having to use mouse
If you have the chat closed and someone send a message, the chat icon will change color (orange) and will animate

Clickable Contents

html is not allowed to format test (for security reasons) but I've added a cool system that can transform some syntax in a clickable context that interact with the game interface

take this picture as example of final results:

here what you can do, displayed in order respect image:

• FIND: render a clickable button that when clicked find a named hunter / player, select him and center on map

  1. writing something like #huntername will create a link to the general (huntername.0)
     syntax: #huntername example: #myHunter
  2. writing something like #huntername.1 will create a link to huntername.1
     syntax: **#huntername.index example: #myHunter.1

• SET AS TARGET render a clickable button that when clicked find a named hunter, add him to Targets and center on map
  syntax: *huntername.index example: *myHunter.1

• GO TO LOCATION render a clickable button that when clicked center the map on the selected cell location
  syntax: #locX,locY example: #154;234

I'm adding other useful things on top of this (in future emoticons too but atm more important things to do).

try it out and let me know, maybe in chat! (I'll be Mithril Man there)

the download link is the same, go to the landing download page

Hunters hunt

released a new version of Huntercoin: Mithril Edition (HUC:ME) : v 1.0.3 (858)

this is mandatory, everybody need to update or authentication will fail

• add some visual hints
  • display ghost coins where they could spawn (Image 1)
  • display coloured spawn/bank areas (Image 2)
  • enanched console visualization for message regarding alarms (Image 3)
  • revamped messaging system, more compacth and readable, with clickable elements when needed (like alarms that point to hunters like in console) (Image 4)

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

(update: now clickable names are shown better)

Image 4

(update) i spotted a little visual bug (popup message when your hunter reach destination are with a "warning" skin while they were supposed to be with a "success" skin, will be fixed in the next update  

• fixed a bug about player disappearing
  now i join information taken from name_list plus name_pending, case of disappearing hunters should be gone (or at least very rare, never happened)

• fixed some behaviour about hunter/player selection

  • now selecting a player from "My Troop" window will autoselect the general
  • using the shearch feature, will show path of the selected found hunter, like if you select it in "Cell Info" window (previously it only selected the hunter)

• fixed some problems about fee system someone had faced, eg:

  • fee is requested after synchronization ends
  • fixed some buggy behaviours that could cause the client ask the fee twice for 5 minutes

• improved website backend, now when your client has an error i send that error to my server so i can understand what's wrong and it's easier for me to fix that

I think I forgot some other things i added :D

that's all for the moment, the download link is the same, go to the landing download page

Hunters hunt